This article originally appeared in the March, 12, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine. Inhabitants of the tiny tropical island of St. Helena pay through the nose for internet service that mainlanders would have considered painfully slow during the pre-Netflix era. The British-governed territory depends on the geostationary satellite Intelsat 23 to connect its 4,500 residents to the outside world. That satellite provides the island’s only internet and international telephone connection via a single 7.6-meter dish. Kedell Worboys, St. Helena’s U.K. representative, and Nevin Mimica, commissioner for international cooperation and development,…

WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched its 50th Falcon 9 rocket on March 6, carrying a large telecom satellite for Spanish fleet operator Hispasat. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 12:33 a.m., and deployed the six-ton satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit 33 minutes later. SpaceX did not attempt to land the Falcon 9’s first stage after the mission due to poor weather conditions that prevented sending the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” out to sea. Hispasat 30W-6 is the largest…

WASHINGTON — Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg said his company has refrained from running headlong with other fleet operators in adding new telecom satellites over areas now burdened by an oversupply of capacity. That glut of satellite capacity in Asia, Africa and Latin America puts pressure on fleet operators to consolidate, but the industry shouldn’t look to Telesat to initiate any mergers or acquisitions, he said. Goldberg said Telesat is focusing instead on deploying a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), which would be differentiated from other systems…

WASHINGTON — Satellite fleet operator SES has agreed to join Intelsat on an amended proposal to let 5G networks use some of the satellite industry’s coveted C-band spectrum for next-generation cellular systems in the United States. The modified proposal, building on a submission Intelsat and computer chip-maker Intel made to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in October, would allow mobile networks to use one-fifth of satellite-designated C-band. SES had stipulated in November that, while considering Intelsat and Intel’s plan, the operator could not support opening the full 500-MHz of U.S.…

WASHINGTON — Satellite fleet operator Intelsat kicked off the beginning of a partial constellation replenishment focused on replacing the company’s Galaxy line of satellites with a Jan. 8 order to Orbital ATK for the Galaxy-30 satellite. Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital ATK will build Galaxy-30 in anticipation of an early 2020 launch with a yet-to-be-named launch provider. In a prepared statement, Intelsat’s senior vice president of space systems Ken Lee said the Galaxy-30 satellite “will be the 11th satellite Orbital ATK has built for Intelsat, and represents the first satellite in the…

GLASSBORO, New Jersey — RSC Energia of Moscow said Dec. 27 that the satellite it built for Angola has stopped sending telemetry data after separating from the rocket upper stage that took it to geostationary transfer orbit. In a Russian-language press release on the company website, Energia said the Angosat-1 telecommunications satellite initially established contact, but then ceased to continue communicating with ground teams. Angosat-1 launched Dec. 26 on a roughly nine-hour Zenit mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite was on the way to its 13 degrees…

MT LAUREL, New Jersey — A Zenit rocket, flying for the first time in two years, successfully orbited Angola’s debut satellite Angosat-1 on Dec. 26. The land-launched Zenit lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on a nearly nine-hour mission to deliver the 1,647-kilogram satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. Russian state corporation Roscosmos confirmed spacecraft separation from the rocket’s Fregat upper stage at 10:54 p.m. Eastern. The Angosat mission is a first for both Angola, the oil-rich African country that gained its first new president…

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 5 okayed the first part of a satellite-servicing mission Orbital ATK’s Space Logistic subsidiary has with Intelsat, saying the servicing vehicle can execute “rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking with the Intelsat-901” satellite while in a graveyard orbit. Regulatory approvals for the first Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1) are proceeding as planned, Joe Anderson, vice president of business development and operations for Space Logistics, told SpaceNews Dec. 12, though the FCC deferred on some of the company’s requests. The commission has, for now,…

WASHINGTON — If the U.S. Federal Communications Commission wants a more accurate database of C-band satellite dishes, it should make the process of registering those dishes less expensive and time-consuming, fleet operator SES said Dec. 6. In a letter recounting a Dec. 4, meeting between Luxembourg-based SES and representatives of the FCC, SES argued that its C-band customers have little incentive to register their dishes, since registration is a voluntary process that can cost over $1,000 per site. The FCC is pushing for an updated registry of C-band users to…